A Tale of Two Colonies: How Cameroon’s German Past Shaped its French Repression

To fully understand the French repression in Cameroon, one must look at its prior history as a German colony. This “tale of two colonies” shaped the territory and the nature of the independence struggle that France so brutally suppressed.
Germany was the original colonizer, establishing “Kamerun” in 1884. After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the League of Nations split the territory, handing mandates to Britain and France. This division cut across existing ethnic and political lines, creating immediate tensions.
The French inherited a territory with a history of anti-colonial resistance against the Germans. The independence movement that emerged after World War II, the UPC, was fighting not just against French rule, but for the reunification of the British and French-controlled territories. This made them a particularly potent threat in the eyes of Paris.
France’s brutal response was partly driven by a desire to make a definitive statement and hold onto its part of this strategically important former German prize. The historical context shows that the French war was not just an isolated colonial conflict, but the violent culmination of decades of European imperial competition over Cameroonian land.